About the Author

One of eight children, Zora Neale Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama on January 7, 1891. At a young age, her family moved to Eatonville, Florida, the first all African-American town to be incorporated in the United States. Eatonville is where Hurston spent most of her childhood. Her father later became mayor of the town, which Zora would glorify in her stories as a place black Americans could live as they desired, independent of white society. Hurston was offered a scholarship to Barnard College where she received her B.A. in anthropology in 1927. While she was at Barnard, she conducted ethnographic research under her advisor, the noted anthropologist Franz Boas of Columbia University. Hurston applied her ethnographic training to document African American folklore in her critically acclaimed book Mules and Men (1935) along with fictional stories like Their Eyes Were Watching God. (see Wikipedia entry)

Other novels with Southern settings

Sisters Nettie and Celie, the former a missionary in Africa, the latter a southern woman trapped in an unhappy marriage, share their thoughts and experiences throughout a thirty-year correspondence. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Harlem Renaissance

In the 1920s, the Harlem, New York community became the economic, political, and cultural center of black America. Various literary and artistic works were created celebrating the African-American experience. Zora Neale Hurston was closely associated with this movement, known as the Harlem Renaissance. If you’re interested in this time period, here are a few further examples of Harlem Renaissance writers:

"Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to jump at de sun. We might not land on
the sun, but at least we would get off the ground." Zora Neale Hurston from Dust Tracks onthe Road -- her autobiography

Hurricanes

"They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God." (chapter 18)

Hurricanes have grabbed the headlines in recent memory, with the devastating destruction of Hurricane Katrina. Closer to home, in 1969, Hurricane Camille destroyed Nelson and southern Albemarle Counties. Here are some stories of their aftermath.

Quick Fact -- According to her autobiography, Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their
Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks while she was conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Haiti and recovering from a failed romance. The circumstances were hardly promising,
but the novel, published in September 1937, almost exactly a year after she arrived in
Port-au-Prince, is considered by some to be her masterpiece. (Barbara Johnson, “Metaphor,
Metonymy, and Voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God,” in A World of Difference 1987.)

Share the Their Eyes Were Watching God experience with younger readers